In any exercise, it is desirable to provide the user with monitoring and feedback information to encourage use. Modern exercise equipment incorporate computer electronics to monitor and display exercise progress as well as user parameters.
In the case of Officizer, where the user is likely to be an office worker using a PC while exercising, the idea is to use the PC for the monitoring and feedback tasks as follows. The user is provided with software designed to operate in a multi-tasking environment, such as Windows 95 or Mac. The software may be in the form a floppy, CD-ROM, or downloaded from a web site. Once loaded and run, the software presents the user with a setup screen as shown in FIG. 1.
As part of setup, the user indicated the time interval at which he/she is to be reminded to exercise during the work day, enter his age, weight and desired workout level. The user also specifies the resistance level being used in the Officizer apparatus. It is contemplated that the Officizer will be supplied with at least three sets of resilient, color coded members having different coefficients of elasticity. Given this information, the program calculates the maximum heart rate (based on age in a manner well known in the art), and determines and displays a target heart rate as a percent of maximum, where the percentage is based on the specified workout level.